Dead Island Tango
by Zombie Boy
Summary: What happens when you have a character lying around that like but really don't use very much and your friend plays Dead Island? This, of course.
1. Chapter 1

The

Dead Island

Tango

Oo000oo000oO

Chapter One

Oo000oo000oO

_Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? _

_Living Dead Girl, _Rob Zombie.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach closed the door to her hotel room and dropped her purse and carry on bag in a chair as she walked into her hotel room. Sitting down on the bed, she flopped backwards and let out a contented sigh.

"_Finally."_ she thought as she closed her eyes. "_After eight gorramed years, I'm _finally_ on vacation. After the voodoo mess, getting my phd while working two jobs, I'm getting a break._"

Peach's mouth quirked up into a smile when her thought's strayed onto the "voodoo incident", as she privately termed it. Specifically, it was the irony that if hadn't _been_ for the "voodoo incident", there's no way that she would have been able to get her phd while simultaneously working two full time jobs- at least not while still being able to maintain a pulse.

Which was the one thing she lacked after the voodoo incident. To make a long story short, her sister had used voodoo magic to try and kill her and their parents in a bid to get their inheritance. Unfortunately, her sister had fucked up the spell in a most spectacular fashion and turned her into, well, _something._

What that was, she had no idea. Neither did any of several witch doctors, voodoo priests, and other assorted experts she had consulted. The only thing they could tell her was that she was a zombie-ish entity.

The things she did know about her condition were few but definite: she was an undead: No pulse, body temperature, etc. She craved brains like a traditional zombie, but the magic that animated her healed her along with keeping the abilities that she'd had in life – intelligence, personality, coordination, etc.

She also never tired, didn't need to sleep, was unaffected by the weather, all the pluses of being a zombie. Those attributes came in handy when she was in college and afterward when she was saving for this vacation.

Now it was time for her kick back and relax, get some sun, and enjoy the three weeks that she was going to spending away from the bar and the store where she worked at.

The sudden chiming of the hotel's public address system jolted Peach from her reverie and she opened her eyes.

"Attention hotel guests-" a woman started to say in a New Zealand accent, but whatever she was saying was downed out by the pounding of footsteps and screaming outside her door.

Peach sat up, a scowl on her face. There was a raspy, feral, element to some of the screams that she didn't like. Getting to her feet, she walked to her hotel room door and listened. There was the same raspy feral screaming, along with the sound of fists pounding on breaking wood, then more screaming followed by the tearing of flesh and the spray of blood.

"Gorramit..." Peach muttered. She knew what those sounds meant. "First time I go on vacation in over a decade and what happens? A gorramed zombie outbreak."

Rubbing her eyes, she stepped away from the door and grabbed her carry on bag. While she was under no threat from the undead beginning to spawn throughout the hotel, there was going to be a lot of panicking people running around, and all it would take was for someone to do something stupid like throw a Molotov cocktail and then she'd be trapped in a burning high rise hotel.

That didn't mean she was in hurry though. At that moment, from the sounds coming through the door, it sounded like the hallways were full of panicking humans and zombies. Her best choice was to just stay put and assemble everything she'd need to get through her current situation while she waited for the humans to either get turned or hole up somewhere.

That wasn't much. A couple of changes of underwear, spare bra, swimsuit, (hey, you never know) two shirts, pair of pants, laptop and power cord, hairbrush, plus all of the amenities in the bathroom went into her carry on bag, plus her identification, passport, and cards.

"Okay." Peach told herself as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Lets go."

Oo000oo000oO

Death. The stench of washed over her in waves when Peach opened her hotel room door. It was mixed with the coppery scent of fresh blood and the rancid stink of raw fear. The hallway was dark, the only light coming from emergency lighting and the windows at the end of the hall. Some where on her floor she heard the muffled scream of a woman cut off in mid note.

"Okay." Peach said as she looked up and down the hall. "Where the hell are the stairs?"

Grumbling under her breath in irritation, Peach adjusted her bag's shoulder strap and headed for the end. As she walked past the room two doors down, she heard the crunch of cartilage and stopped. There, framed in the splintered remains of the door way was a woman in a bikini crouched over the body of a man, eating his face. Farther into the room she saw a woman's arm lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

"God, I hope it was quick for you." Peach said to the deceased in a low voice.

Moving on, she reached an intersection where another hallway crossed the one she was in. Stopping, she took a quick look around and saw a pictograph style sign depicting stairs with an arrow.

"Oh, thank goodness." Peach said as she turned in the indicated direction, and stubbed her toe on something.

Peach very slowly looked down and saw that her foot had contacted a child's backpack, with a teddy bear lying nearby, both spattered.

"Oh God..." Peach said quietly as she gently removed her foot from contact with the bag.

She might be a zombie like entity with a craving for brains, but she still had her humanity.

"I've got to get out of here." Peach muttered and hurried away from the bag.

Oo000oo000oO

The rest of her journey outside of the hotel was alternated between quiet horror, sympathy for the dead, and irritation at the architect for how he laid out the hotel. Outside, the sun was shining, there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and four zombies were chowing down on a pizza delivery man by his vehicle.

"Well, isn't this lovely." Peach commented as she took in the scenery. "Now, to get some wheels."

"Raaaaahhhhh..." said a zombie that was shuffling in a aimless circle nearby.

"Really?" Peach asked it.

"Raahh..." the zombie answered.

"That way, you said?" she asked, pointing eastwards, down the driveway of the hotel.

"Raah!"

"Thank you, sir." Peach thanked the zombie.

"Raa-aah..."

Readjusting her bag, Peach set off down the driveway.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach reached her destination an hour later, un- winded and in pretty much the same condition that she left in, thanks to her _unique_ condition. Her destination, however, was much more relevant to the story: Peach was standing outside Bub's Pizzeria, where there was a Vespa delivery scooter and two corpses chewed down to bones and sinews in the parking lot.

Walking over to the scooter, Peach saw that the keys weren't in the ignition, which really didn't surprise her all that much. Who leaves the keys in the ignition?

Walking around the scooter, Peach saw that the scooter had a reflective sticker of the number four pasted to the front.

"That should make things convenient." she murmured to herself, then turned and headed into the pizzeria.

Inside the restaurant, she found a badly chewed delivery boy just inside the entrance way lying on his side, a set of keys in his hand. Crouching down, she tugged them free and took a look at them.

"Okay-" she looked at the delivery boy's name tag "-Shaun, thanks for the scooter." she added, looking at the "4" written on the key fob in marker.

She almost headed out to the scooter right then, but stopped and went back deeper into the restaurant. Skipping the register, she headed straight for the kitchen. She came out ten minutes later with a plastic bag containing a kitchen knife with a scabbard made out of card board and tape, the roll of tape she used to make the scabbard, dish soap, napkins, matches, and other assorted items.

Walking out to the scooter, she dumped the bags into the bags and slapped the helmet that was stored inside on her head, started the scooter and headed out.

"_Okay... I remember that there are some old WW2 bunkers around here somewhere..."_ she thought as she puttered along.

Ahead of her, she saw a small crowd of shuffling zombies and slowed her speed. As she approached the crowd they turned and started to approach her, then they got a whiff of her scent and began to turn away. And that's when Peach got an idea.

"Excuse me..." she asked the nearest zombie, a woman in a tiger stripe bikini with a divot bitten out of her neck. "I'm looking for those old WW2 Japanese bunkers that are supposed to be around here. You wouldn't happen to know where they are?"

The zombie turned to face her and shook her head. "Raah." she moaned, her head swinging oddly from the severed muscles and tendons in the left side of her neck.

"Oh." Peach said. "Well, thank you anyways."

"Raah."

At this point another zombie dressed in normal street clothes joined the conversation. "Raa-aaah." he said, pointing at a road that looped it's way up along a hillside. "Raaaaaahhhrahh raaah..."

"Oh, okay..." Peach said as the sound of a roaring diesel motor faded up over te sound of her idling scooter. "What the hell?" she asked.

Peach got her answer a moment later when a bus erupted over the top of a hill, going full bore and careening wildly before reaching the first turn on the way down and bursting through the guard rail like a giant diesel coach version of a xenomorph from Aliens. It shot over the edge and tumbled down the steep, almost cliff like side of the hill before coming to a stop at the bottom, resting on it's side and neatly blocking the road.

"Well, shit." Peach said. "Is there another away around?" she asked as she watched the closest zombie shuffle towards the over turned bus.

"Raaah, raah raah rah raaaah..." the local zombie said, gesturing as it described the way. "Raaaaah rah raaaaah."

"Oh, okay." Peach said as she memorized the directions.

At that point a small car came tearing around the bend way too fast, the driver obviously in a panic. They saw the bus and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The car plowed into the curious zombie before smashing into the fuel tank on the bus and exploding into a fire ball.

Peach grimaced at the impact and watched the now burning vehicles for a moment "Well..." she said to the local zombie "At least it was quick."

"Raaaah."

Blipping the throttle on her scooter, Peach threaded her way through the zombies and began to take the long way to the bunkers.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach paused when she got to the top of a hill that over looked the ocean, taking in the majestic view of the coast that it offered and took a picture with the camera that she had stuffed into the hip pocket of her shorts. Then she considered the line gray black clouds that were on the horizon, riding the wind in towards the island.

She remembered from last time she had checked the weather forecast for Banoi Island that it was forecast to be hit by a monsoon shortly after she was supposed to arrive, but the rest of her time there looked to be sunny and cloud free. Still, it was a reminder that she needed to find secure shelter, and fast.

Revving her scooter, she pulled out and followed the road inland.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach found the bunker the zombie had told her about two and a half hours later. It's entrance was just off of a jungle path, hidden by the over growth and unlocked. Turning on a flashlight that she taken from a wrecked para rescue truck, Peach swept the beam over the interior of the bunker and found it to be in one piece and surprisingly good condition.

"Okay." Peach said to herself as she began to explore the rest of the bunker "I think that this place might actually work. Gonna need to do something about the décor. Bare concrete is _soooo_ last year."

Peach's exploration revealed that the rest of looked like the entrance, which was clear of debris, no plants or animals, and it looked like there were no water leaks or anything like that. Dropping her bag in a side room, she headed back out the front.

And ran right into two members of the local criminal element looking over her scooter.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach stood there for a moment, watching them as they looked over her scooter.

"Who the 'ell parks a scooter in the middle of the bloody jungle?" one of them asked his friend.

"I do." Peach said, answering reflexively.

"KILL HER!" the first one's companion roared, and they both opened fire.

It took seconds for both men to run their guns empty as they shot at her, but their accuracy was terrible- out of the twenty six rounds from the two Berettas the men were carrying, only four hit their target, and in places that would not be immediately fatal to a human, and that would be down right non fatal to a zombie.

"Hey." Peach said as she looked down at herself. "I liked this shirt!"

"What the fuck?" the second man said as they began to back up. "Why isn't she dead?"

"Because I'm already dead, dumbass." Peach answered him as she began to stalk towards them.

"Oh shit, they talk now!" the first man said "RUN!"

At that, both men turned and ran. It didn't do them a lot of good though. One of them, the second man, went three paces and caught his foot on a root and twisted his ankle. His friend kept on going, making it almost thirty yards skidding to a stop and reversing course, trying to get away from the group if blood spattered humans running towards him, making the raspy, feral, screaming that Peach had heard earlier.

Peach looked down at the man who was desperately trying to crawl away from her while fumbling around in his pockets for something, probably a spare magazine for his pistol.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God..." the man kept repeating as Peach advanced on him.

"I honestly don't think he likes you all that much." Peach told him as she came up to him.

The man found what he was looking for, pulling a magazine from his pocket. Ejecting the spent mag from his pistol, he tried to insert it into the mag well but his hands were shaking so badly that he fumbled the insertion and the magazine slipped from his fingers.

"See?" Peach told the now hysterically sobbing man as he scrabbled around, trying to find it again. "Now don't worry, this wont take long."

The man screamed as Peach lunged for him, and kept on screaming as he wrestled with Peach, trying to throw her off him. He called out for his friend, who was likewise in his own struggle for survival. Bit Peach had the upper hand, being on top of him and having untiring undead stamina and strength, and soon his screams cut out as her teeth crunched through his skull into his brain.

Oo000oo000oO

When she was done, Peach kicked herself. She had a bottle of hot sauce in her bag and she had forgot to bring it with her. But it was too late now, she'd already finished. Standing up, she looked down at her gun shot wounds and saw that they were already beginning to close, the bullets being pushed back out as the magic that animated her repaired the damage.

"Well, that's the end of this shirt." Peach muttered as she took in the bullet holes and blood soaked into the front. "Oh well."

Going through the man's pockets, she found a wallet with some cash, some loose rounds of 9mm, a candy bar wrapper, and some lint. She took the ammo along with the gun and magazines, leaving everything else.

Walking down to where that group of running undead were feasting on her meal's companion, she crouched down and tapped an undead on the shoulder.

"Excuse me." she said to it.

The undead made a squealing noise and moved aside for her, and Peach looted the other man's pockets, taking his spare magazines along with a pocket knife and his pistol. Standing up, she headed back to the bunker to clean up, deciding to take the guns with her to use as trade bait in case she ran into some friendly survivors.

"_Though I wonder what's with all the running undead_?" Peach thought as she walked along. "_Never seen anything like that before..I had better ask one of them what's going on._"

Twenty minutes later she had gotten herself cleaned up and was walking out to her scooter. Getting on it, she fired it up and pondered what to get next. Tapping her finger on the handle bar for a few moments, she glanced at the gas gauge and saw that it was on three quarters of a tank. That cemented it for her. She'd go for fuel next- and oil, as well, since her scooter was a two stroke.

Revving the throttle, she pulled away and headed back down to the beach.

Oo000oo000oO

There was a station that Peach remembered passing by on her way to the pizzeria, so she headed there. Gas shouldn't (Theoretically) be a problem there, not with the speed that the out break was progressing. What she was worried that since it was near the beach, that it's inventory would be geared more towards tourists in rentals and not the locals.

When she pulled up to the station, there was about five or six cars parked in the lot, and three regular zombies chowing down on the corpse of one really unlucky attendant. Pulling up to one of the pumps, she killed the motor and put the kickstand down, then got off to go looking for a gas can (and a bottle of two stroke oil).

The front doors had been barricaded, but something had smashed through them and the occupants were dead, by about a couple of hours judging by the smell. Stepping over the bodies, Peach searched the store and came up empty for two stroke oil. However, she did score a map of Banoi island, along with some energy drinks, jerky, and power bars.

It was when she was putting the items she'd found inside the scooters box that she realized that the station had a repair bay in an outbuilding. Mentally kicking herself, she headed over to it and inside found what she was looking for, a whole case of two stroke oil along with a couple of gas cans.

She also found a positive sign- dead zombies. They'd been bludgeoned to death it looked like, and a couple outside had been run over repeatedly with a vehicle. Walking back out to the pumps, she filled the gas cans and tied them down in the cargo box of the scooter, then she went over to where the zombies were feeding.

"Excuse me, did you see some humans come through here?" she asked one of them.

"Raaaaahhh..." the zombie answered.

"You did? Where they in a vehicle?" she asked.

"Raaah." answered the zombie. "Raaah rah Raaaaaaaaah."

"Oh. So it was only the one person. Did you see where he went?"

"Raaaaaaah." the zombie answered.

"Okay, thank you!" Peach thanked the zombie before going back to her scooter.

Starting the scooter, Peach looked at the position of the sun in the sky. Mulling it over, she decided that she had enough time for one more run.

"Better get some lights..." she said to herself. "Don't know how long the power is gonna stay on..."

Flipping the kickstand up, she gave the scooter some gas and pulled out of the gas station.

Oo000oo000oO

Peach dropped the fuel off at the bunker, and then headed back to the hotel with the aim of scrounging some flashlights and other assorted items. As she rode down the drive she noticed that there were a few more cars in it than before, and more zombie corpses.

"Well, that's a good sign..." she murmured as she rode past one that had gotten it's head caved in.

She parked up by the front of the hotel, next to a tour bus that she remembered just pulling up when she arrived at the resort. Curious, she took a look at the luggage piled up next to the bus and saw that it had already been partially searched through, again indicating that there was someone alive running around.

There was nothing really useful in the luggage and Peach decided to check out the bus itself. She stuck her head in, saw that it was a charnel house and stepped right out of it. Leaning up against the bus, she took a moment to compose herself.

"Fuck..." she said "Those poor people..."

Shaking her head, she straightened up and headed into the hotel lobby. There was no point in worrying too much about the people on the bus. They were dead, and not reanimated, and (she hoped) in a better place. Better to worry about those who might still be alive and uninfected-

Peach stopped. Someone was screaming.

Oo000oo000oO

She found the source of the screams fairly quickly. It was in a block of offices off the main lobby, with the names of the people who worked in the offices on little placards with their jobs written underneath them. It was the office of Ashley Finnegan who was responsible for boat tours that she found a man wrestling with one of the running zombies.

When the man saw Peach, he shoved the woman off of him, sending her crashing into the wall.

"Ohgodohgodohgod..." the man panted as he watched the woman slump to the floor.

The man jumped when Peach pushed the door to the office open and scrambled around to put the desk between him and her.

"Whoa... I'm not one of them..." Peach said, holding her hands up so where he could see them.

"Oh thank God!" the man exclaimed, coming around the desk towards her. "Me and my wife-" he gestured at the woman lying crumpled on the floor "-we were trying to get away from all the crazy people and then she went nuts-"

"Nobody's crazy." Peach told the man as she noticed some blood on his hands. "They're dead. We've been dropped into some crazy assed Romero movie- the good Romero, not one of the pretentious lecturing Socialist ones."

The man looked at her in confusion for a few moments. "What?" he asked. "What are talking about? That's impossible..."

Peach shrugged. "It's very much a real thing, and you're gonna become one of them." she said, pointing at his left hand, which had a very clear bite mark on the edge of the palm.

"What?" the man asked, looking at his palm. "God, no, it's impossible, you're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding..." he begged.

"Peach shook her head. "Sorry." she said. "Wish I was. But, I got a pistol you can use, keep you from becoming one of them-"

At this point the woman in the corner let loose a raspy shriek and launched herself at the man. He only had time to scream before she was on him, latching her teeth into his pectorals.

"Huh." Peach said as she looked at the mauling going on at her feet. "She was only stunned... interesting."

Crouching down next to the couple, she tapped the woman on the shoulder. "Excuse me..." she said politely.

"RRRRRRAAAAAAH!" shrieked the woman before clamping down on the man's neck.

"Pardon my interrupting your meal, but what kind of zombie are you? I've never seen a infectious running zombie." she asked.

"RAAALALALALARRGH!" the woman screamed around a mouthful of flesh.

"Ohhhhh..." Preach said. "How does that work?"

"RAAAAAGGGHRRRrrrrrraaah!" the woman said before taking more bites from her gurgling, twitching, husband. "RRRAaaaaarrragggh!"

Peach blinked at what the zombie told her. "Oh. So you runners are the people who got infected but not killed when attacked?"

"RRRRRAAAAAAAH!"

"Okay... interesting. And the regular kind are the ones who were killed and reanimated?" Peach asked as the man went still.

"RAAAARRRGGGH!" the woman confirmed as she continued to feed. "RRRRAAAAARRRRAAAAGGH!"

Peach's eyebrows shot up when she said that. "So eventually you're either gonna mutate, or become a shuffler?"

"RRRAAAAEEEE!"

"I see..."

Peach looked at the man's corpse for a second. "Hey, I'm a sort of voodoo zombie. You mind if I chow down on his brains? I brought hot sauce." she asked, producing the bottle out of her pocket.

"RAAAAEEEEEEGGGGH!" the zombie said.

"Thank you." Peach said as she positioned herself at the man's head. "So, what brought you two here?"

"RRRAAAAEEEERARAAAA!"

"Surprise for your anniversary? How sweet!" Peach said before cracking the man's skull.

Opening her bottle, Peach poured a healthy dollop of sauce on and began to feed.

Oo000oo000oO

End.

Author's note: Okay, first, I hope you all liked this. And now my motivation for this: Peach is a character of mine that I came up with on a whim a few years ago, and really haven't used her for much. And I watched my friend play Dead Island, and we were doing our running commentary, and then voila! We had a story plotted out.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a fun one to write. Anyways, thanks for reading and leave a review!

Zombie Boy.


	2. Chapter 2

The

Dead Island

Tango

Oo000oo000oO

Chapter Two

Oo000oo000oO

Ahead of her, Xian Mei watched as Sam B gripped his baseball bat in a tight grip and _carefully_ stalked down the hall to where there was a chewed on body lying on the floor. When he got as close as her dared, he reached out with his bat and poked it in the foot. He waited for a few breathless seconds, then poked it again.

When it didn't get up and try to eat his face, Sam relaxed a bit and waved Mei forward.

"Okay, it's dead." he said while he swiveled his head around, looking for threats. "I'm gonna see if there's anything we can scavenge in this office. You keep a lookout."

Mei nodded as Sam stepped into an open office door, bat at the ready. While he did that, she walked up close to where the body was and started doing what Sam had done, keeping her head on a swivel and keeping a look out for those... things that were consuming the island.

Seeing that the coast was clear, Mei spared a glance down at the length of steel pipe that was her weapon and her gaze just happened to fall on the dead body. She was just about to look away in revulsion when she noticed something odd about it, in a very macabre sort of way.

The brain pan was chewed away and the corpse's brains eaten. Mei felt her gorge start to rise and looked away, but the analytical part of her brain then noticed that were bloody footsteps on the carpet originating in the pool of blood by the victim's head, and walking with clear, distinct, steps past her down the hallway. Those footsteps weren't the shuffling, smeared one's of what Sam had dubbed "walkers" nor the abbreviated running ones of the infected, but the kind left by a human.

So why were they standing by the victim's head?

Swallowing, Mei forced her urge to vomit down and cleared her throat.

"Sam..." she called.

"What is it? You see something?" Sam asked as he came to the office door.

"Yes." Mei answered and pointed at the footsteps on the floor. "Look."

"What?" Sam asked, not understanding what she was getting at.

"The footsteps." Mei clarified, sweeping her pipe along them for emphasis. "They're kind normal people make, not those things."

Sam's eyes widened slightly in surprise when he saw what she was getting at. "Son of a bitch..." he swore. "You're right. There's some people alive around here..."

"Yes, but, look here." Mei said, again fighting the urge to vomit as she pointed to the pool of blood by the victim's head.

She noticed that Sam didn't seem the slightest bit affected by by being in the presence of a dead body, in fact he crouched down to take a closer look.

"Oh man, what a mess." he commented as he examined the bloody mess. "What am I supposed to be looking at, anyways?"

"The footsteps originate in the blood, and the brains been-" Mei choked and coughed as she fought the urge to go Linda Blair "eaten."

"Awww, hell." Sam said as he stood up. "Just what we need. A cannibal psycho running around with all the other crap trying to eat us."

"How can you be so-" Mei gulped "-blase about this?" she asked.

Sam shrugged. "I grew up in the Ninth Ward, baby." he said. "This shit is _mild_ compared to what goes down there on a Saturday night."

Sam looked down at the body lying on the floor, gave a tired sigh, and then looked back up at Mei. "C'mon." he said. "There's nothing in there. Let's go."

Mei nodded and followed him down the hall, taking care to step around the body.

Oo000ooo000oO

Peach braked to a stop and put down the kickstand. It was mid morning, and while she had intended to be down at the beach at first light, a sortie by the local criminal element had preempted that plan and she'd spent most of the morning running them down. After having to change clothes -_again_- she decided that she had a enough fuel for the immediate future, and that a change in clothing was in order.

So, she'd headed down to the beach intending to hit the local beach front shops for as many bikini tops as she could carry - and a backpack to carry them in. The box on her scooter was nice and roomy, but there was a limit to what it could carry. Plus, with a back pack, Peach could scavenge more effectively.

So, she was back at the resort. Getting off her scooter, Peach looked around and decided to go for the closest shop. She hadn't gone more than five steps when she saw one of the running zombies Infected, that's what they called themselves go running by, heading for a surf shop. And that's when she heard the faint sounds of a pipe meeting skull.

"Survivors!" she told herself, and launched into a run at the shop -not too fast though. She didn't want to get a pipe to the head.

She was about ten feet behind the Infected when she saw run into the shop. There was a "_Thwack!_" of wood on skull, and the Infected came flying back out with a large dent in its noggin. Skidding to a stop, Peach took a breath and composed herself. She really hoped it wasn't some more of those criminals.

"Hello in there!" Peach called out as she approached the shop. "Are you alive in there?"

There was silence for a moment, then a male voice that sounded very familiar responded. "Yeah, who are you?"

"My name's Peach." she responded. "I'm a tourist. I just got here when all hell broke loose. Can I approach?"

The man hesitated for a second, most likely checking with his partner, the owner of the pipe that Peach had heard being used before answering. "Yeah, you can approach. But don't try anything!"

"Wasn't planning on it." Peach answered.

Keeping her hands out from her body, Peach walked around to the front of the surf shop, trying to keep herself near as many avenues of escape as possible just in case it was more of those criminals. The best plan she could come up with was if they were criminals was to grab the Glock she had tucked into the back of her waistband and head around the corner of the shop, cutting off their angle and giving her time to get away. Most of the time, they weren't much threat to her as they used guns and went for body shots, which really didn't affect her all that much. But these guys were using mêlée weapons, which mean that she was much more likely to get thumped in the head, which was pretty much fatal for a zombie, as that Infected who had run in before her had found out-

"Oh, my. GOD!" Peach exclaimed as she got a look at who was in the surf shop. "You're Sam B!"

Oo000ooo000oO

The one thing, Sam realized, that you never expect when you find yourself in a living, waking, nightmare, is to run into a rabid fan.

"Ohmygod,ohmygod, ohmygod, it _is_ you, you're Sam B!" the girl said, clapping her hands as she bounced up and down on her feet. "I love your work! I have your last album, _Lurkin'_, and-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Sam said, holding up his hands. "Slow down, girl. First things first. Who are you?"

The girl stopped, took a breath, and collected herself "Okay, I'm Peach." she said, extending her hand.

"I'm Sam, as you know." Sam said as he shook hands with her. As he did, he noted that her hand felt very odd. "And the young woman behind me is Xian Mei."

"Hi!" Peach said to Mei. "So, what are you two here for?"

"We're working our way back to a lifeguard station." Sam said. "We were in the hotel and ran into a swarm of the runners -"

"Infected."

"Huh?" Sam asked.

"They're called Infected." Peach elaborated.

Sam gave her an odd look. "How do you know that?" he asked.

Peach gave a little shrug. "I asked."

Sam took a little step back, trying to put some space between himself and the now obviously crazy girl. "You asked..." he asked, carefully. As if to an insane person.

Peach, however, picked up on it immediately. "Oh." she said. "You don't -Hold on. Let me show you."

Peach then reached over to where there was a dive knife lying on a counter and picked it up.

"Watch." she said, flipping it around so it was pointing at her sternum point first.

"Whoa, hold on, girl, there's no need to-" Sam started to say before Peach drove it into herself point first.

Sam and Mei both jumped when Peach stabbed herself. Peach's response was to twitch slightly.

"Ow." she said, then gritted her teeth as she pulled on it. "Oh crap, I think I got it caught on a rib.."

Sam normally would have freaked out by now, but finding himself in a zombie outbreak had numbed himself to gore, and that what was missing.

"You're not screaming." Sam said as she pulled the knife free. "Or bleeding."

"Yeah." Peach said, looking down at the knife wound in her torso. "Kind of hard to bleed when you don't have a pulse."

"Just what in God's name _are_ you?" Sam asked.

"A voodoo zombie." Peach said, looking down at the hole in her shirt with a frown. "That mean's I'm animated by magic, not whatever's making the guys around here move."

Peach looked up to see Sam and Mei holding their weapon's up at her. "I'm not gonna eat you." she said.

"I find that kinda hard to believe." Sam pointed out.

"Well, it's true." Peach countered. "The only people I eat are criminals."

"That's not true." Mei countered.

"What do you mean?" Peach asked.

"In the hotel, we found a body, with the brain eaten." Mei said. "I recognized him. I checked him in myself-"

"Oh, _him_." Peach said. "Yeah, ah, he'd already been bitten." she added. "I, ah, ate just after he had died, so..."

Sam gave her a long look. "So, you're saying that you ate that guy, but he was already dead?"

Peach nodded. "Yeah. He'd already been bitten, and I had just told him that when his wife grabbed him and killed him. She was the one who'd bitten him."

"So if someone's bit, you'd eat them?" Mei asked.

"Only after they'd died." Peach pointed out. "Though, I will point out, if someone attacks me, I would eat them. But only if they attack me first."

"So you're saying that the only time you eat people is if they attack you first?" Mei asked.

"Yeah." Peach answered. "And there is something else. I can walk around the zombies and they won't attack me."

Sam and Mei both paused she said that. "Wait, what?" Sam asked. "They don't attack you?" he asked.

"Uh huh." Peach said.

"Hmmm..." Sam said, a thought occurring to him. "Mei, I have an idea. We could use someone like her."

"She's one of them!" Mei protested.

"Ah, no I'm not." Peach pointed out. "I'm a voodoo zombie. That means I"m not infectious and I'm magic based."

"She's still-" Mei began but Sam held up his hand.

"If she's voodoo based, she's not like them." Sam said. "I know this stuff, Mei."

"She's dangerous." Mei insisted.

"So we'll keep an eye on her." Sam told her with a shrug.. "If she can wander around these..._things_, without getting attacked, we can use that."

"What he said." Peach said, pointing at Sam with the hand holding the dive knife. "Oh, sorry." she said, swapping hands. "As I was saying, what he said."

"Now, you know a way to the lifeguard station without us getting ate?"

Peach shrugged.

Oo000ooo000oO

"So, you have all my albums?"

"Yeah." Peach answered. "I love what you did with _Lurkin'_, how you explored African American mysticism and it's interplay with Christianity..."

She stopped when Sam started chuckling.

"What?" she asked.

"You're the first person who's gotten that." Sam told her "In the ten years since I released that album, you are the first person who got the theme."

"Well, I _do_ have a Ph.d in religious studies." Peach said. "It's a good subject to study when you get turned into a mutant voodoo zombie."

"Mutant voodoo zombie?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I have free will, regeneration, along with the lack of a pulse and the brains thing." explained Peach.

"How does that work?" Mei asked from behind them. "Your condition, that is."

Peach shrugged. "Like I said, it's magic." she said. "Voodoo magic, but the person who did it fucked it up so badly that nobody I've talked to can figure out how she did it."

"She?" Mei asked.

"My sister." Peach said. "She didn't like me, let's put it that way."

"Oh." Mei said. "She didn't tell you?"

"I, ah, ate her brains." Peach explained.

"Why?"

Peach took a long look around at their picturesque surroundings before she answered. "When she did whatever she did to me, it was while I was driving." she explained. "And my parents were in the car with me. They're dead now."

"I see." Mei said.

The three of them paused when they heard something roar, it's call echoing across the beach.

"What the fuck was _that_?" Sam asked, looking around at their surroundings.

"Huh." Peach said, her head cocked to one side. "She was right."

"Who?" Sam asked.

"Remember that guy I ate, the one that you found?" Peach asked.

"Yeah."

"His wife told me that the were gonna infected mutate eventually." Peach said. "I think that was one of them."

"Great." Sam said. "Where do yo think it is? I don't want to fight whatever the hell that was."

"Hold on." Peach said, shading her eyes with her hand and squinting. "I got an idea. Wait here."

"What's she doing?" Sam asked, watching as she ran towards some palm trees.

"I don't know-" Mei started to say when a walker lurched into view from behind the palm trees.

They both watched as the self-described zombie headed straight for the real zombie. She went up to, got it's attention, and then talked to it for a minute, then headed back to where they were as the it walker shuffled back the way it came.

"Hey guys." Peach said as she came up. "I figured out what's making that noise and where it is."

"So where is it?" asked Sam.

"Over there." Peach said, pointing at some beach houses. "It calls itself a Thug, and it's over there in those beach houses."

"Good." Sam said. "Let's stay the fuck away from that place."

"That... _thing_ told you that?" Mei asked.

"Walkers." Peach corrected. "They call themselves walkers. And I told him if her told us what that thing was and didn't attack us when we went by, we wouldn't smash its head in."

"It told you that?" Mei asked.

"Yeah." Peach replied. "Don't ask me how. It's related to the voodoo magic, and like I said, I have no idea how it works."

"Did it tell you anything else?" Mei asked.

"Yeah." Peach said and pointed in a direction that led away from the bungalows that the roaring. "He said go that way."

Oo000ooo000oO

From the bungalows, it took the party an hour and a half to get back to the lifeguard station. (It would have been an hour, but they stopped for a rest break).

As they approached, Peach cleared her throat.

"Hey, why don't I wait outside while you guys explain what's going on?" she asked. "I don't want to be in there if they freak out."

Sam nodded. "Not a bad idea." he said. "Don't know how I'm gonna explain this, but I'll think of something."

"Compared to what's been happening lately?" Peach asked.

"Good point." Sam said, and nodded at Mei.

Peach watched as Sam and Mei went into the station, then decided to muse herself by poking at the zombie corpses with a handy stick.

Oo000ooo000oO

Sinamoi peeked out the door slats at the woman poking at the corpses with a stick.

"So she says that she's a zombie?' he asked.

"Yeah." Sam answered.

"Are you sure she's not crackers?"

Sam and Mei both shook their heads. "Nope." Sam said."I was thinking that at first, then I saw her walk up and talk to a walker."

Sinamoi looked away from the slats at Sam, then glanced over at Mei, who nodded. "It's true." she said. "I watched it myself."

"Hm." Sinamoi said, and looked back out the slats. "Is she dangerous?" he asked.

"No." Sam said.

"Yes." said Mei.

Sinamoi frowned slightly at the mixed answers that he got. "So one of you think she's okay, and the other thinks that she's not." he said. "We need to figure out what to do with her."

"Why don't we have her do something to prove her self?" Sam suggested.

"Like what?" Sinamoi asked.

Sam scratched his chin as he thought, but it was Mei who spoke first.

"We had to leave the lorry at the hotel." she said. "Have her go get it."

"That's what it'll take for you to trust her?" Sam asked.

"I'll trust that she wont _immediately_ turn on us." Mei answered. "That's as far as I'm willing to go."

"That'll have to do." Sinamoi said. "One of you go tell her."

"I'll do it." Sam said.

"Hold it." Sinamoi said. "We got company- bloody hell!"

"What?" asked Sam.

"She's talking to them!"

Oo000ooo000oO

"Excuse me?"

"Raaaah.''

Peach stepped backwards with a shocked look on her face. "I most certainly will _not_!" she said "Just what kind of zombie do you think I am?"

"Raaah rah rah raaah." the zombie said.

"Absolutely _not_!" Peach said. "Now, there is a man in that station with a very large baseball bat, and if you don't get out of here, he's gonna come out here and bash your head in. Now get going!"

Peach punctuated her last statement by pointing down the beach away from the station. The zombie hung its head shuffled off. She watched it go, hands on her hips.

"Pervert." she muttered.

"Who is?" asked an Australian accented voice behind her.

Peach turned and found herself facing Sam, Mei, and a dark-skinned man with a facial tattoo dressed in a lifeguard's uniform.

"He was." Peach answered, pointing in the retreating zombie's direction. "He asked me if I wanted to get naked and chow down on the people who are in there." she added, pointing at the life guard station. "But I don't eat innocent people, and while back him I may work in a porno shop as a second job, I do have standards!"

Sinamoi, Mei, and Sam listened to Peach's mini rant with incredulous looks on their faces.

"You work in a porn store?" Sam asked, breaking through the surrealism that wrapped around them like cotton wool.

"Yeah." Peach said. "I work there days and weekends because since I've graduated college, I got these empty spaces in my week that I've got to fill, and there is only so much WOW you can play before you get bored-"

"Never mind that." Mei said, interrupting Peach before she could go off on another surreal tangent. "We have a task for you."

"Oh." Peach said. "What kind of job?" she asked.

"We had a lorry." Mei explained. "We used it to drive to the hotel, and we left it there because there was a swarm of...those _things_.''

"And you want me to go retrieve it."Peach stated.

"Yeah." Sinamoi said. "You know how to drive a manual?"

Peach nodded. "Uh huh." she said. "My first car was a '89 Accord with a five speed." she added, then sighed wistfully. "I miss that car. If it hadn't been for that steam roller..."

"Excellent." Sinamoi said. "Then you shouldn't have too much trouble with it being right hand drive."

"Right hand drive=" Peach asked, then snapped her fingers. "Oh, that's right. You guys do things backwards here."

"Speak for yourself,Yank." Sinamoi said as Sam stepped forwards.

"Here." he said, handing her a set of keys. "You're gonna need these."

"Thank you." Peach said as she took the keys. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

At that, Peach set off for the hotel. Sinamoi, Mei, and Sam watched her go.

"What a strange girl." Sinamoi observed.

"She ain't so bad." Sam said. "She'll grow on ya."

"As long as she doesn't try to eat us, I won't have a problem." Mei said.

Oo000ooo000oO

"Okay, now where the hell am I?" Peach asked no one in particular.

"Raaaahhh..." said a random zombie said as it shuffled by.

"What the-" Peach started to say, then turned around and saw the bulk of the hotel silhouetted against the night sky. "Oh. How did I miss that?"

"Rahh rah raaaaaaaah..." the zombie answered.

"I can see that." Peach told it. "Thank you for pointing that out to me."

"Raaaaah." the zombie said as it shuffled off.

Squaring her shoulders, Peach set off towards the hotel- carefully, for she had discovered, much to her chagrin, that she had left the flashlight she had scavenged back at the bunker. And littering the local landscape was things that could trip you up and make you fall.

Stuff like curbs, dead bodies, luggage, and other assorted debris. Stuff that was invisible in the dark until you tripped over it. This was one area that Peach's undead status _didn't_ confer any advantages she still had her normal 20-20 human vision.

"Grrr... wish Paquita was here..." Peach muttered as she carefully felt her way through the shrubbery towards the hotel. "Her night vision would come in handy right about now... make talking to the other zombies kind of tricky though."

Paquita was her room-mate, a ghoul dating to the Spanish Civil War. _She_ had night vision that was unparalleled. Of course, being a ghoul, she'd consider the zombie outbreak a literal walking buffet. Which, as Peach had observed, would make talking to the undead a rather tricky proposition.

With one final push, Peach stumbled through the decorative shrubbery out on to the hotels drive way. This, thankfully, was tastefully lit by spotlights every few feet, giving her more than enough light to see.

And what she saw at the far end of the drive, parked by the tour bus, was a blue Toyota Hi-Lux that hadn't been there when she had left the hotel.

"And, jackpot!" Peach said as she headed for the truck.

When she got to it, she found it unlocked. She almost clambered into the left side of the vehicle, but remembered that it was a right hand drive model and went around to the other side. Getting in, she dug the keys out of her pocket and started it up.

"Okay, Peach..." she told herself, studying the shift pattern on the knob of the gear lever. "You can do this. It's just like driving any other clutch, it's just that you gotta shift with your left hand instead of your right."

Grasping the knob, she pushed it left and sent into reverse, which felt all sorts of wrong to her, and looking backwards, smoothly let the clutch out. The truck went into reverse and began to back up, and Peach grinned in triumph.

"Okay..." she said "This is a good start."

Once she had gotten herself backed up, Peach put it into first (which still felt all kinds of wrong to her) and started down the drive, taking care not to run over the undead shuffling around. When she reached the end of the drive she stopped and rolled down her window.

"Hey..." she called to a zombie wearing a hotel uniform "I need to get to the beach, by the surf shop. You know I can do that from here?"

"Raaaahhhh..." the zombie said as it turned around to face her. "Raaaaah rah rah raaaaaaaah raaah raaaaaaah..."

"Oh, okay." Peach said. "Thank you."

"Raaaah."

Putting the truck into gear, Peach turned left and drove away.

Oo000ooo000oO

It was just before dawn when Sinamoi got shook awake by Sam.

"What is it?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbow.

"There's a truck coming." Sam said.

"What?" Sinamoi asked. "Is it that girl?"

Sam shrugged. "Dunno. The only thing we can see are the headlights." he replied. "All we know is that it's head ing right for us."

"Shite." Sinamoi swore and got to his feet. "Come on. Let's go see if they're friendly."

Sinamoi followed Sam outside and found Mei standing on the deck of the station, machete in hand as the truck pulled up.

"Well, I'll be damned." Sam said as Peach parked the truck. "Look who's back."

"Sorry I took so long." Peach said as she opened the driver's side door. "I got lost a couple of times, and I had to get gas, plus I was able to scavenge some stuff for you guys while I was at it..."

"Not a problem.'' Sinamoi said as he looked at the bed of the truck, which was full of supplies- and a scooter. "What's with the scooter?" he asked.

"That?" Peach asked, looking at the bed. "Oh, that's mine. I've used it to get around the island. It's pretty useful, and easy on gas."

"I see." Sinamoi said, and then nudged Sam with his elbow. "Well, let's get this stuff unloaded." he said. "It wont do it itself, you know..."

Oo000ooo000oO

End.


End file.
